


With my hand, my fingertips.

by orange_crushed



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Pete's World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-15
Updated: 2011-04-15
Packaged: 2017-10-18 02:52:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You've still got the palm of your hand;<br/>feel the world with it."<br/>-LANDS, <i>Genki</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	With my hand, my fingertips.

Sometimes when he wakes, Rose is already gone.

He lies in the sheets and stretches his toes over the curve of the footboard; nothing is ever quite long enough for this frame. Sometimes he is afraid he is still growing, some trick of regeneration, especially when he looks at his toenails. Rose says that isn't true, that he'll shrink instead. That everyone does. She said that with a strange, unhappy look on her face, but it might not be all bad. Eventually, it will save him the trouble of having his cuffs taken out.

The air is warm and fine and her side of the bed isn't yet cool. There's still a long golden hair curled on her pillow like a thread, a tendril, a creeping vine. He twists it around his fingers and smiles to himself. She is climbing the walls, in a manner of speaking. She's been itching to get away for a bit. Work is constantly calling for him, some fuss about airspace treaty negotiations with the Valiizi. Eventually he'll get around to telling them that the Valiizi are interphasic beings with little interest in the physical world, but first they're going to have to reinstate his borrowing privileges at the lab. Actually, first they're going to have to get him a new phone. Rose drowned his in the bathtub last night.

It's early still, as he pulls on a pair of trousers and shuffles over to the window, bare feet sliding a little on the hardwood floor. The window is open, curtains rustling, and there's a folded-up piece of paper on the ledge. If it were anyone else, with anyone else's habits, he'd think it was a receipt or a dry-cleaning tag drawn from a pocket and wadded up carelessly. It isn't. He unfolds it carefully and reads the neat, girlish handwriting.

 _Majorca_ , it says. _The island, not the planet,_ it says, lower. There is a small smudge on the _t_ , as if she paused, wondering if he'd really understand. But he understands better than anyone.

 _Hurry._

 

 

He finds her lying belly-down on the roof, in a two-piece, with a book splayed open beside her and her head resting on her forearms. She doesn't stir as he clambers up the tiles and sits down on the beach towel spread out beside hers. "Morning," says Rose. She's half-asleep with the morning sun on her back, the skin of her cheek flushed and lined where it's been pressed against her wrists. "Glad you could make it."

"Caught a red-eye." He rolls onto his side and regards her, chin propped up on one hand. "The in-flight movie was _Shrek Nine: The Shrekening_ , in case you were curious." Rose giggles into the towel. He switches gears and pretends to be overly interested in her skin condition, taking a lingering look over her naked back and certain regions to the south. "You're a bit exposed, Miss Tyler."

"Well?"

He rubs suntan lotion into her shoulders, enjoying the twitch and purr of her response, the warm smell of her skin and the fainter smell of leaves from the shielding trees around them. There's privacy on the roof, mostly. As much privacy as can be expected in a world of low-flying zepplins. He finds himself circling lower, smoothing his hands over the backs of her thighs and calves while she watches him with patient interest. "So," she murmurs, "what do you want to do today?" He leans back, wiping his hands on the towel.

"Majorca," he says. "Got to see the beaches, of course. And you'll want to shop. Maybe some dinner, a bottle of wine, some outdoor cafe with music playing." He trails off. Her eyes are shut, listening and absorbing the sun. If he puts his face towards the light and lets his lids slip down, he can almost see what she sees: the white strip of sand and the houses above that. He can imagine her in a cotton dress, bracelets clinking together, her feet bare and spreading ripples in clear water. "Before the sun sets, we'll wander up the hill and through the olive trees. You can almost taste them when the wind blows. We could picnic on a cliff overlooking the sea, hearing the waves and the gulls crying, and then-"

"Mm," says Rose, pulling him flush against her. She's slippery and heated and her mouth is against his throat. "Then we'll lie down and watch the clouds passing. And when we get tired of that-" He kisses her. She parts her lips and smiles into it, quickening his pulse into a beat. He wonders, briefly, just how much cover the trees really provide, and decides he doesn't care. "Exactly," she whispers. She undoes the button of his trousers and slides her hand inside, warm palm meeting warm flesh. He's aching for her. He picks at the string of her bikini bottoms and she wriggles out of them, suddenly impatient and arching against the fingers he dips down. She rolls him on top, pressing kisses to his bare collarbones and sighing as he slides into her. It's hot and slow and the sun beads drops of sweat on his back and beneath him, Rose groans and wraps her ankles around his, pushing up.

Afterwards they lie sprawled out on the blankets, trying to let cooler air onto their skin. He traces the lines of her veins along her forearms and up into the bend of her elbow, and back down to his wrists and fingertips. She seems to be waiting for something, and it clicks. He has finally figured out what he has to do.

"Let's go," he says. He turns his head to look into her eyes. She's grinning. "Right now. Anywhere you like."

"I thought you'd never ask," says Rose.

 

 

They leave on an evening flight, one bag each slung over their shoulders with passports and hairbrushes and changes of underwear inside. They leave a note under the Tylers' door, but that's it. Rose is dangling her leather sandal off one foot, sprawled in the uncomfortable chairs preferred by airport terminals everywhere. She's hiding under a floppy straw hat because although he forgets she could be anyone besides Rose, she is still the surprise daughter of the richest man in England. She keeps looking over at him and smiling, as if he was something lost that she just found again and wants to keep her eye on.

"You were being so good," she says, softly. "Going to work, dinner with my parents, fixing up the house." Fixing up is a generous term; she hasn't murdered him yet over his little improvements and the holes in the walls. He can barely hear her over the blaring of the announcements, so he slides closer in his seat. "I kept wondering, doesn't he want to get away from this?"

"Daily," he says. "But I stay when I want to stay." He takes her hand, folds their fingers together over the cheap fake leather, and squeezes. He can't quite meet her eyes if he's going to finish this thought out loud. It still feels raw, to say these things. To make them real and lasting. "This," he says, tracing her thumbnail with his own, "is where I want to be most."

"At Heathrow?" She's teasing. "You are such a masochist."

"Rose-" he begins, and a boarding call shrieks out of the speakers over his voice. It's their flight. It's been switched to a gate on the other side, and the high-pitched announcer is all apologies. They are departing soon. Rose lets go and stands up, swinging her bag over one shoulder. She stretches out her hand. He stares at it for a second before he takes it. He keeps taking it, in fact, over and over and over again. And it keeps leading him good places.

"My turn," she says. "Allons-y."

And they do.


End file.
